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Mississippi Edition: Wednesday, March 2nd

Last Updated
by Sid Scott on

Stock Photo: Ohio Gov. John Kasich

Alex Hanson/Flickr

John Kasich In Mississippi

Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is far behind in the polls and in the delegate totals so far this primary season. The Ohio governor was in Mississippi last night drumming up support for a campaign that appears to be losing momentum. While GOP front-runner Donald Trump was claiming victory in many Super Tuesday primaries, Kasich made the case for his bottom-tier presidential bid. His moderate stances on immigration, Common Core and Medicaid expansion are not popular among Southern conservatives. However, Kasich told supporters he still thinks he has a shot at winning Mississippi.

State Flag Lawsuit

Governor Phil Bryant is speaking out, calling a lawsuit against the current state flag frivolous. On Monday attorney Carlos Moore sued the Governor, saying the Confederate emblem on the flag violates the civil rights of African American Mississippians and promotes an atmosphere of violence. Bryant said the suit is misdirected.

Southern Education Desk, Part 2

Computer coders have found a champion in Florida Senator Jeremy Ring. Ring, a former Yahoo executive who helped build the company, believes coding and technology is an art, rather than a science. He wants to attract more students to STEM studies. In this Southern Education Desk series, Priming the Pipeline for STEM in the South, Lynn Hatter of WFSU reports on Ring’s proposal to allow Florida students to choose coding in order to fulfill a foreign language requirement for college.

Equal Pay Act Inspiration

Lilly Ledbetter was born and raised in Alabama. The wife and mother of two worked for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 to 1998. As she prepared for retirement, Ledbetter realized she had for years been paid significantly less than the men at the Goodyear plant who were performing the same job. She sued Goodyear and her story became the basis for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Ledbetter was in Mississippi recently recounting her story. She told us she first learned about the pay discrepancies from an anonymous tipster.